


The horse and his rider hath he thrown into the sea

by kaasknot



Category: Pilgrimage (2017)
Genre: Gen, Gen or Pre-Slash, Good old-fashioned Medieval ignorance, Gore, Hurt/Comfort, Jewish Character(s), Look if you wanted to survive a wound like that you wanted a Jewish or Muslim doctor, Medical history nerdery, Plus Jon Bernthal's Jewish so, Post-Canon, Them's the facts, fixit fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-28
Updated: 2018-08-28
Packaged: 2019-07-03 19:51:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,626
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15825798
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaasknot/pseuds/kaasknot
Summary: A small, unworthy part of Diarmuid’s heart wished he had never left the monastery. Good men did not seem to exist beyond it, for those who tried were killed. Killed as Rua had been, as Ciarán had been, as Cathal had been. As now the Mute surely was. Diarmuid stood in the boat and watched the shore, and he was split in twain by uncertainty.





	The horse and his rider hath he thrown into the sea

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Exodus 15:1, "Then sang Moses and the children of Israel this song unto the LORD, and spake, saying, I will sing unto the LORD, for he hath triumphed gloriously: the horse and his rider hath he thrown into the sea."
> 
> Idk, it seemed thematically apt, given that Diarmuid and the Mute crossed the sea to escape a marauding lord ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

Sunlight fell upon the survivors of the tiny boat, and Diarmuid shivered. The salt smell of the sea covered the reek of blood. The soughing of the waves covered the moans of the dying. All Creation seemed frozen, poised on the edge of a breath, waiting.

A small, unworthy part of Diarmuid’s heart wished he had never left the monastery. Good men did not seem to exist beyond it, for those who tried were killed. Killed as Rua had been, as Ciarán had been, as Cathal had been. As now the Mute surely was. Diarmuid stood in the boat and watched the shore, and he was split in twain by uncertainty.

Brother Geraldus would certainly have said to turn his back and press on to Waterford. But Geraldus, and the relic he was sworn to collect, were at the bottom of the sea. The imprint of his hands still ached against Diarmuid’s skin. His words still echoed in Diarmuid’s ears, and Diarmuid, he was young, and he had come to see his innocence; but he was not a fool. He suspected Geraldus was not as good a man as he liked others to believe. His pilgrimage, blessed by the Pope or not, was tainted.

But to return—Diarmuid shook at the thought. To return to the monastery, to look the father Abbot in the eye and say, “Mea culpa, mea culpa, I have lost the relic of St. Matthias, and lives of my fellow brothers and the Mute. Mea maxima culpa.” To return to the shore, also: he could see the figures of Sir Raymond’s men yet waiting, standing silent upon the sand. They would not look kindly upon the poor novice monk who had, however indirectly, cost their liege his life.

To the shore, and to the Mute. Surely he was dead. Diarmuid castigated the hope in his chest, for surely no man could have survived a battle against so many. Diarmuid could see him now, just barely, fallen and not yet risen. Diarmuid knew in his bones, as chilling as the ocean spray, that the Mute would not rise again. He yearned to be by his side as he had never yearned for God; he feared, as he had never feared the fires of Hell, to see him die.

Stay or go? The Heavens held their breath and waited.

“I am sorry,” he finally said to the boatman, for though it sounded hollow upon his lips, he felt it ought to be said.

The boatman looked at him for a long time, seeming as spent in the aftermath as Diarmuid was. When he spoke, it was merely to say, in a tired, thoughtful tone, “I’ve lost a good cargo.”

“I can help you recover what we can of it,” Diarmuid replied, for it was the least he could do.

The boatman looked him up and down, then back to the men-at-arms upon the beach. To Diarmuid’s surprise, they were turning away, departing the beach and the charnel upon it. He supposed their duty was dispensed with. The relic was lost, the monks protecting it punished, and now, with their lord fallen, nothing held them here.

“Alright,” the boatman said. “It’s the least you owe me.”

They set the boat to rights, and at the boatman’s urging, they uncurled Brother Cathal from the stern and let his body slip beneath the waves. Diarmuid disliked the perfunctory nature of it, and that Cathal would be sharing a final resting place with Geraldus. Had he died at the monastery he would have been an old man, and he would have been sung to his eternal rest by all of his brothers. Here, he had only Diarmuid, who spoke an uncertain _requiem_ beneath the boatman’s suspicious gaze.

At least it was easier rowing back to the shore, for the tide was coming in and the currents aided their tired, faltering limbs.

Sand scraped against the hull. Seabirds wheeled overhead, drawn by the smell of fresh blood. A cask bobbed against the side of the boat, and Diarmuid hastily drew it in, lest the vision on the beach drive movement altogether from his body. It was like and unlike the aftermath of previous clashes on this ill-favored journey: the bodies of men lay scattered about, discarded like chaff as the wheat of their souls were collected to Heaven; blood—less thickly scented than in the still air of the woods, where it cloyed in the humid space between breaths—washed down the beach in scarlet flags, drawn by thirsty water. Diarmuid’s hands shook as he reached for another cask, and the felt-wrapped bale, sodden but still buoyant, that knocked against it.

Soon he was obliged to quit the boat for solid ground, to reach cargo that had gone further astray. Some had been drawn out to sea by the rip currents, but most bobbed aimlessly against the beachhead, or had sunk, and which Diarmuid was obliged to find with his feet when he tripped over them. 

He stopped when he saw the boatman leaning over one of the dead Normans.

“What are you doing?”

The boatman glanced up at him. “People will pay good money for mail and weapons of French make. I’m not leaving them for someone else to profit from.”

Diarmuid swallowed back the bile that rose in his throat. “Thou shalt not steal,” he said faintly.

The boatman snorted. “They won’t hurt from its absence, and I will gain. You keep your English god to yourself.”

“I’m Irish,” Diarmuid mumbled, sickened and confused. He didn’t speak against the boatman’s actions again, choosing instead to stray further afield in search of the jetsam of their hasty flight. He carved an irregular path over the beach, gathering whatever was closest to hand before carrying it back to the boat, but a burning urgency had lit inside him as soon as the boat had landed, and though he was mindful of his duty to the boatman, he saw little but the Mute, lying still upon the bloodied sand a handful of yards away.

He was so still. Surely he was dead; Diarmuid had seen Sir Raymond plunge something into his stomach, and a curdling fear assured Diarmuid it was the same arrow that had disembowelled Ciarán. His Mute was dead, and Diarmuid couldn't bring himself closer to see, to make it real.

But then the Mute moved. He dragged his arm up, his fingers furrowing through the wet sand, and Diarmuid’s heart froze in his chest. 

He barely heard the wet smack the bale of wool made against the sand as he dropped it, or the shout of the boatman when he broke into a run. There were only those broad shoulders emblazoned with the Holy Cross; those dark curls, smeared with blood, sweat, and salt water; and a weak roll of muscle showed life yet plucked those fearsome sinews.

“Mo chara,” he gasped as he fell to his knees. “God, please, do not let him be dead. Do not take him from me.” The Mute’s skin was cold and gritty with salt and sand as Diarmuid eased him to his side, then on his back. Blood was everywhere. Diarmuid trembled when he saw the Mute’s gore-soaked face; his veins ran with ice when he saw the arrow shaft jutting from his stomach. It was as he had feared, then. The Mute was slain, for all that he was not yet dead.

“No,” he said brokenly. “I don’t even know your name.”

The Mute opened his eyes. They were dark and fathoms deep, like the ocean; Diarmuid felt the press of tears against his own eyes, and the breaking in his heart.

“God is all things, but God is unfair,” he choked out. He knew it made him sound a child, but the memory of Brother Ciarán’s entrails being drawn out of him as easily as gutting a fish was seared upon his thoughts, and the image of it happening to the Mute, his beloved mute laybrother, his _friend_ , was more than Diarmuid could stand. His tears fell in stinging drops, washing blood from the Mute’s chest.

Once, Diarmuid had thought all silence the same: an absence of sound, an absence of other people. The Mute had shown him otherwise. Silence could be shared as easily and as meaningfully as words. There could be somber silence, contented silence, amused silence, angry silence—though that, rarely. Here, now, Diarmuid found the wrenching silence of desperation, where no words, not even his own, were enough. The Mute raised his hand to Diarmuid’s cheek. It was clammy, callused, sticky with blood; Diarmuid leaned into it. “Don’t go,” he whispered. “Don’t leave me.”

The Mute’s eyes were sorrowful and pained. He labored for every breath; his upraised arm trembled, and eventually, he had to let it drop. Diarmuid felt blood cooling on his cheek. It would be soon, he hoped. God would not be so cruel to grant a lingering, painful death to His faithful servant.

Distantly, he heard footsteps come up behind him. “Tide’ll go out in a half-hour,” the boatman said. “You coming?”

 _Are you coming._ Diarmuid shook beneath the weight of the choice. Did he stay here with the Mute and watch as he died? Or did he carry on to Waterford on a pilgrimage that had died long before?

Or—his heart beat apace. “Is there a physician in Waterford?” Hope flared, scalded; Diarmuid felt he would burn from the inside out by the strength of it.

The boatman snorted. “He’s a dead man. He’ll be gone before the tide’s even turned.”

“It—it is God’s place to decide how and when someone dies! His time has not yet come, and we will not hasten it! Is there a physician in Waterford?”

“Lad… that arrow, it’ll have cut into his bowels. The infection alone will kill him, if the loss of blood doesn’t.”

“Is there a physician!”

The boatman stepped back with a sigh. “Aye, there should be.”

“I will pay for our passage.” Diarmuid held out the pouch of reliquary jewels. He didn’t know what his face looked like; tear-stained and bloody, he supposed. But he felt the fire of a reckless hope inside him, and perhaps it was that which convinced the boatman. He raised his hands, looking away.

“No, lad. Keep your jewels. I’ve got payment enough from the arms and armor.” He glanced to the Mute. “You’ll need them to pay the bonecutter.” He turned away and trudged back to the boat.

Diarmuid tied the jewels back to his belt. “Will you be able to stand if I help you?” he asked the Mute, already reaching down to his shoulders.

“Diarmuid…”

His voice was cracked, faint. He winced, his teeth red with blood. Diarmuid stared, the hairs on the back of his neck standing on end.

“Go. Leave me.”

Diarmuid’s breath came sharply, almost as it hand in the forest, when the Mute had mistaken him for a clansman and tried to kill him. “No,” he said simply, unable to muster anything else in the face of this miracle. He bent and drew the Mute’s near arm over his shoulder, waiting for the Mute to bring his own exhausted limbs to bear.

It was with a resigned manner that he did so, allowing Diarmuid to help him. He was sweaty and pale, his skin clammy, and his small sounds of pain tore at Diarmuid’s heart. Diarmuid stared at the arrowhead emerging from his belly, the torn flesh where the barbs had gone in; blood seeped out even now, running down to stain the Mute’s trews. The Mute pressed his hand against the wound. He had wrapped it with his shirt, Diarmuid saw; the shirt was torn and bloody now, but it was enough, maybe, to stanch the bleeding until they reached Waterford and the physician.

Waterford was the largest town for leagues in any direction, and the largest port. There had to be a physician.

Getting into the boat was a new form of misery. They had to wade to reach it; the tide had come in enough that it went to their hips. Diarmuid had thought, over the course of the trip from the monastery to here, that he had seen every sort of pain that could befall a man. Witnessing the Mute’s agony as he forced himself into the boat because Diarmuid asked him to—what a fool he was. The boatman’s face was stony, but he did not bar them from their efforts. Diarmuid felt as shaky and pale as the Mute looked by the time they got him over the gunwales, and both were drenched in seawater. The boatman unstowed the oars. Diarmuid took a moment to wash the blood out of the Mute’s beard, cupping his hands and pouring seawater over his face. He tore a strip from the hem of his robe, and with that he scrubbed a little more at the blood, until the clean lines of the Mute’s face were revealed. His eyes were closed, a curiously peaceful expression on his face. Diarmuid feared the hand of God was upon him, and that his death was near. What an odd thing to fear: for a good man’s suffering to ease.

The Mute’s eyes opened at that, and Diarmuid realized he had said it aloud. “Please do not die,” he said for good measure, his voice cracking as it had not in years.

The Mute watched him sadly, but he nodded. He would try. That was all Diarmuid could ask.

“Are you going to help?” the boatman demanded, breaking the reverie. “Rowing is a two-man job, and you got my partner killed.”

There was strain in his voice, an off-note of guilt, as when Brother Eoin had grown angry at Diarmuid for knocking open a gate that Eoin had forgotten to lock in the first place and letting out the monastery’s flock of chickens. He left the Mute in the bow of the little boat—sharp memories of Geraldus’s contorted face looming over his—and settled on the nearest bench, taking up the oars once more.

The scant two hours it took to reach Waterford imprinted themselves strangely upon Diarmuid’s mind. He had thought himself toughened by the long journey and the flight that had followed; he found that he was not, at least as far as rowing went. His arms ached before long, and his hands grew hot, then painful; but the narrowest, most tense sliver of his attention was focused solely on the Mute behind him, whose raspy breathing rose with such forced regularity that Diarmuid could only assume he was deep in a prayerful mind to keep the pain from touching him. He had seen the Father Abbot do such: he could endure tremendous cold without injury, and many other feats of privation.

 _Please, O God, let him live. Hold him in the palm of Your hand_.

Pain, fear, and a return of his world to simple, shrunken bounds: row. Listen for the Mute’s next inhale. Don’t look for Waterford, for then it will never come. Pray, and beg God’s mercy. When the boat bumped against the pilings of the jetty, it knocked Diarmuid from his trance, and it felt like the world was new-made and strange, both crisp and distant.

“Here you are, lad,” the boatman said. “Waterford.” His eyes were hard. _For all the good it will do you_.

Diarmuid looked back to the Mute. His eyes were closed, his breathing shallow, his skin sickly gray. But as though he felt Diarmuid’s gaze upon him, his eyes opened a sliver, and then wider, as he took in the narrow, thatched roofs of Waterford. He shifted his limbs, deep lines of exhaustion and pain creasing his face.

“Let me help,” Diarmuid said, stumbling over the bench and his own feet in his haste, and rocking the boat in the process. The Mute clung to the gunwales; a strangled sound of pain emerged from his lips, and the ecstasy of hearing his voice was matched only by the agony of Diarmuid being the cause of his pain. “I’m sorry,” he said, near to tears. He was not one easily given to tears; had he been more in control of himself, he would have been alarmed at his fragility.

The boatman did his best to keep the boat steady as they struggled out, pressing his oar against the silty bottom of the river, and tying off against the jetty. In truth, Diarmuid paid him little mind, the whole of his attention fixed upon the Mute—until he said,

“I hope for your sake he pulls through, lad.”

Diarmuid stared dumbly at him for a long moment, before fumbling one-handed at the pouch on his belt and extracting a pearl. It was just a freshwater pearl, not as costly or rare or perfectly-formed as a sea pearl, but surely one gem would not curse the boatman?

The boatman held it in his palm. He shared a long, wordless glance with Diarmuid, then nodded to himself. “Physician would probably be near the smithies,” he said, pointing. With that, he turned to his wares, sodden though they were.

“Thank you,” Diarmuid said, then made his slow, limping way into the heart of the town, the Mute reeking of iron and salt against his shoulder.

The world did not seem real. Great towering buildings overshadowed them, striped white and black; the very sky itself an ominous weight overhead. Formidable men in armor blocked their way.

“No beggars,” they said. Diarmuid was obliged to part with another pearl before they could pass, and pass they did, into an impossibly dark tunnel, darker than night, echoing like the interior of the stone chapel of the monastery; Diarmuid trembled the whole way through with exhaustion and the soul-deep knowledge that the Sidhe would come at any moment from this earthen passage and snatch them away. When they reemerged into the wan sunlight forcing its way through the clouds, Diarmuid wasn’t sure if the Fair Ones hadn’t taken them after all.

“Oi! Clear the way!”

Diarmuid stumbled to the side, making way for a man in a cart weighed down with more cabbages than he could ever recall seeing in one place. Across the road, which was made of stone, he saw more kinds of bread laid out than he ever knew existed. Round loaves, long loaves, strangely shaped and decorated loaves; not even Brother Murchad, the monastery baker, could have done such work.

And the crowds of people. Only the Norman encampment could approach it, but no encampment could compare to the press of bodies through these narrow, stinking streets.

“Please,” Diarmuid said to the nearest person. “Where is the physician?”

“English,” he grunted, and walked on.

“I—I don’t know English,” he said, but the man was already gone. Diarmuid tried again. “Please, Goodwife, where is the physician?”

She looked at the Mute, lolling against his shoulder, and snorted. “You need a priest, little one.” She walked on.

In his desperation, Diarmuid took to wandering aimlessly. He was keenly aware of the Mute’s weight and fleeing life; he could not fathom how he could still keep upright, even with Diarmuid’s help.

No one knew where the physician was. One directed him towards the smithies, but there were no physicians there that Diarmuid could see, and the Mute was beginning to fade.

“God of All, do not end it like this,” Diarmuid whispered to the narrow alley in which he found himself, home only to a pair of stray pigs rooting through the garbage. He regretted worse that the Mute’s deathbed would be a sty and not the open, clean-aired beach.

Beside him, the Mute stiffened, and Diarmuid stiffened in response, certain that this was the end—but the expression upon the Mute’s face was that of one who had seen the Holy Ghost, not the Angel of Death. Diarmuid followed his gaze out of the alley, and saw nothing but an empty doorway. The Mute struggled to his feet.

“What is it?” Diarmuid asked, scrabbling to help him. “What do you see?”

The Mute didn’t answer, shambling across the narrow street to lean heavily against the door. There was nothing about that door Diarmuid saw as being distinctive, short of an odd rectangular box affixed at an angle to the doorpost. The Mute banged on the door, and after a moment a woman opened it. She took in the pair of them, bloody, half-naked, disheveled; Diarmuid saw the surprise in her eyes as she saw the arrow shaft, but her expression smoothed quickly neutral.

“God be with you,” she said in softly accented Irish.

The Mute answered her, but in a language Diarmuid had never heard. The woman stiffened, her eyes going wide. She glanced about the street. “You had better come in,” she said, and opened the door wider to permit them entry.

Diarmuid helped the Mute in, all the while feeling like the world had been turned upon its head. The Mute spoke, and in languages that granted their entry into the homes of suspicious housewives.

As they passed, the woman saw the mark upon the Mute’s naked back, and breathed a word in that same language. The Mute answered her, his voice strained. This exchange resulted in the woman pursing her lips and the Mute looking away, stone-faced. Silence fell; Diarmuid tried his luck once more.

“Do you know of a physician who could help him? I can pay.”

She gazed at him for a time. “There is a physician, yes.” She went to the hearth and knelt by the fire, stoking the embers, before setting a pot of water over it to boil. “He serves only our people.” There was an emphasis on _our_ that somehow felt directed at the Mute.

Suddenly, everything clicked aright in Diarmuid’s mind. Her clothing, the language, the fact that the pigs in the street were wandering strays rather than properly penned. “You’re a Jewess,” he exclaimed. He had never met a Jew, before, let alone a Jewess. Although—he turned to the Mute. “You were a convert—were you a Jew before? Was that Hebrew you spoke?”

The Mute’s expression was pained, but the Jewess’s was far more wary. “I am Jewish, yes,” she said. “And you are a Christian monk.” She glanced to the Mute before looking back to Diarmuid.

“Just a novice,” Diarmuid said, blushing and ducking head head, though he was not sure why. He gave her his name.

“I’m Ruth,” she replied. She returned with a stack of linens. “Press these around the wound. It’s a wonder he hasn’t bled to death already.”

“Please,” Diarmuid said to her. “Will you help us?”

She looked to the Mute, who couldn’t meet her gaze. “I’ll bring the physician.” With that, she left the house.

Diarmuid took one of the linen cloths she had offered and shook it out. It was pristine. White as he imagined Heaven to be. He pressed it against the arrow shaft, tucking it about the slow seep of blood, and it turned red as death. “I didn’t know you were a Jew,” he said. The words spilled out of him without his having put thought to them. “I guess I don’t know much about you; I’d always assumed you were an Irish pagan, like everyone else. Or maybe a Moorish infidel from Andalusia, I’ve heard they’re dark.” He felt every pulse of the Mute’s heartsblood beneath his hands as though it were his own heart pumping his veins dry. He startled when the Mute laid a hand over his. Diarmuid watched as a tear dropped on his hand and run down to his bare wrist.

“I don’t care that you were a Jew,” he said.

The Mute’s thumb ran along the edge of his finger, and Diarmuid shuddered. He swallowed back his tears and mustered himself. “The physician will put you back together and then we’ll go back to the… to the monastery and we’ll…” His words trailed off. They would what? Carry on? If the Mute survived, his wounds would take a grievous long time to heal, and Diarmuid would not leave him. Not when the stab of fear that he would never see the Mute again was so sharp in his chest. “You’ll live,” he said, pressing down with emphasis, and the Mute winced against the pain. “Sorry, sorry.” Diarmuid wiped his face against his sleeve and bit his lip to keep from losing control of himself altogether. “Where _are_ they?!”

The Mute merely gazed upon Diarmuid, as though this was the last chance he’d get. Diarmuid refused to let himself think about why that was; gazing back into those deep, gentle eyes soothed some of the panic that was eating him raw. Whatever happened, it would be alright. They would be together. The comforting presence of his Mute would be nearby, keeping watch. Diarmuid suddenly saw with new eyes the clinging presence of the Mute. “You were keeping me safe,” he said, and tears slid down his cheeks once more. “You—you looked out for me, I never thanked you. How ungrateful you must think me.”

The Mute shook his head. His countenance, bloodied and pale though it was, was soft. He gripped a little harder upon Diarmuid’s hand, and Diarmuid knew: the Mute did not see it as ingratitude, though Diarmuid could not fathom why. To be laden with a, a green youth, too foolish not to meddle in a lord’s affairs, too brash and disobedient for his own good, how could anyone wish for that? “Don’t die,” he said for the hundredth time, his voice chased from him until only a harsh whisper remained. “I don’t know what to do.”

He looked about the room to distract himself. It was a room like most others, he supposed: a hearth, a table (upon which the Mute was now lying), a loom in the corner, and beds behind curtains. There were differences. There was two of everything in the kitchen, from pots to bowls to cutting blocks, and a small scroll hung over the bed. Diarmuid knew his letters, for he was being trained as a lector; he didn’t recognize these, which were wiggly in a way that Latin letters were not. Hebrew, he guessed.

He had felt himself alive in so many ways on this pilgrimage. At the monastery, he had never noticed his body a great deal. It was the goal of the monks to transcend awareness of corporeality, to dwell in the realm of the spiritual and only tend to those base needs which kept them alive. It had been a slow, quiet life. But on the road, Diarmuid had known wonder and anger, he had known fear so profound it shook his bones. Even now, standing in a room empty but for him and the Mute, he could not help but be aware of the hot blood beneath his fingers, and his own pulse in his ears and beating in his joints. His feet hurt. His back ached from stooping. His arms trembled from lack of food and overexertion. His heart ached from grief, and his head felt heavy from tears.

He stood beside imminent death, and he was so keenly aware of his body it made him close his eyes against it and wish for the monastery.

A clatter outside drew his attention. It was the goodwife again; a bolt ran down Diarmuid’s spine. A man was with her. He had long curls on either side of his face, and a satchel over his shoulder.

“My name is Yosef ben Simon,” he said. “I am a physician.” He was a small man, and his dark eyes were wary, but there was a sense of deep compassion about him that Diarmuid recognized from Ciarán.

“I’m Diarmuid,” he answered, shaking now with relief. “I—I don’t know his name, he’s been mute for as long as I’ve known him.”

“Let’s see what has happened.” The physician stepped in, gently prying Diarmuid’s hands away. 

In truth, Diarmuid was amazed the Mute had lived even this long. He couldn’t fathom the strength the man held, to endure such suffering. The flesh about the arrow shaft was swollen and torn; Diarmuid could see bits of muscle and fat poking from it, and visions of his viscera strung upon that vicious arrowhead set a cold sweat along Diarmuid’s limbs.

“This was folly,” he said, only half-aware that he had spoken.

“Not necessarily,” the physician said, disturbing Diarmuid’s thoughts from their morbid bent. To the Mute, he said, “Was there any twisting as the arrow was inserted?”

“No,” the Mute replied.

“What manner of arrowhead was it?”

The Mute looked to Diarmuid.

“He—the man who did it—he said it was Greek. It had four barbs upon it, pointing forward as well as back.”

“I know the design,” the physician said with a heavy voice. “I have seen their effects before. It is fortunate that you did not try to remove it yourself, or that your attacker did not twist it as he surely meant to.”

“Can you help him?” Diarmuid felt both heavy and light, as though a single wrong word would set his joints awry.

The physician pursed his lips. His expression was solemn. “Maybe. If his intestines aren’t punctured, if the wound remains clean, if my tools are adequate. I warn you, it will not be easy.”

Diarmuid cursed hope, for it bit at him. Tears sprung in his eyes. He didn’t face the physician as he gave his reply, instead watching the Mute’s face: “Do what you can.”

At that, the physician sprang into motion. He drew ties from his satchel, and passed them to Ruth and Diarmuid. “Tie him fast to the table,” he said. “He must not move, or he could injure himself.” They did so, tying him at shoulders and knees, although the physician was obliged to re-tie Diarmuid’s knots, for they were too loose.

“Bite down on this,” the physician said then to the Mute, holding a ball of resin before him. “It is opium. It will dull the pain and give you dreams.”

The Mute closed his eyes and shuddered. He scrabbled for Diarmuid’s hand.

“I’m here,” Diarmuid said.

The Mute gazed at him for a long moment, swallowing often; when he finally spoke, he said, “My name is Aaron.”

All of Diarmuid’s breath left him in his a rush. Seven years of memories shifted in his mind, changing tenor as he reviewed them with the secret of the Mute’s—Aaron’s—name in hand. He stared, stricken, and couldn’t even summon forth babble, so great was his emotional turmoil. He held the—Aaron’s hand in a vise grip as the physician fed him the ball of opium resin, and felt small and scared as Aaron made a face at the bitterness, and roiled with fear and sickness as the doctor pulled out a series of strange devices that looked like paired spoons attached together upon hinges.

“It will take some minutes for the opium to have an effect,” he said to Aaron. “When it does, I will open the wound further to see, and to work around the arrowhead.”

Aaron nodded, sweat beading up on his brow. His hand was clammy in Diarmuid’s fingers.

Perhaps in another time, Diarmuid might have been fascinated by the procedure. The physician let his collection of spoons soak in boiled water, along with his knives. “Wounds fester less frequently when the tools and bandages are boiled,” he explained. “My mentor said it banished evil humors from the instruments, which might otherwise be carried from injury to injury.” Diarmuid didn’t understand why he was explaining; the words washed over him senselessly. But his voice was soothing, in the way Ciarán’s was sometimes—Blessed Lord, have mercy upon Ciarán—

Aaron’s limbs went slack. The physician took up his knife. Diarmuid made a garbled sound as he made the first cut and looked away, unable to watch the pull of flesh against steel once more, least of all upon flesh as dear as this.

“I must worsen the wound before I can heal it,” the physician said, and Diarmuid latched onto his voice to steady the spinning around him.

“In order to see?” he asked, his voice at a remove. It was not the blood, oddly enough, that so discomfited him; it was that it was the— _Aaron_ ’s blood.

“That, but more to remove the arrowhead without suction. That would cause worse damage than has already been inflicted, and worse pain for the patient.”

Diarmuid imagined pulling that fearsome point loose from living flesh, and he could not do it without wishing he could do otherwise. “Can it be done?” he said, his voice a near whisper. “I saw him disembowel one of my brothers with it. Can it be done without grievous injury?”

“He is already grievously injured,” the physician said wryly, pulling a pair of those odd spoons out of the water to inspect. “But I can do it without disemboweling him, God be merciful. Hold him.”

With that, he lowered the spoons toward the wound. They were fastened together in such a way that they faced each other, and the physician slipped them between the swollen, bloody lips of the wound and into Aaron’s body. He probed for a long while, doing or searching for what, Diarmuid couldn’t imagine; eventually, however, he hissed in frustration and slowly drew them back out. “Too small,” he muttered. He returned them to the boiling water. Diarmuid watched the trails of dark, clotted blood coil outwards, and the physician drew out a larger pair.

“These spoons cup around the arrowhead so that it may be safely drawn out without tearing the flesh,” he said, holding them up for Diarmuid to better see. “This type of arrowhead, though, is large, and I fear my spoons won’t be enough. Normally I would simply push it through the body and out the other side, such wounds clean best, but I cannot in this case. Not when it is buried in the viscera and I don’t know what lies behind it. There are many vessels for blood in the way, and damaging one would kill him faster than the arrowhead alone will.”

It bordered on more information than Diarmuid wished to have. He nodded like he did for Cormac’s Scripture lessons, which rarely sank in. He watched the physician slip these newer, larger spoons into the wound. This time, he heard the metal click as they connected with the arrowhead. The physician fiddled them around to and fro, at one point pulling the lips of the wound aside to see a little better, then sighed and readied himself.

“This will be painful for him, opium or no,” he told Diarmuid. “If you wish to leave…”

“I’m staying.”

The physician nodded. He said no more; instead, he began to pull, slowly, but steadily. Aaron, staring up at the ceiling with vague eyes and a creased expression, tensed. The physician worked the handles of the spoons back and forth, pulling them free; Aaron gave a thin, eerie moan.

“Almost there,” the physician muttered to himself. “Thank God it is not buried too deeply…” 

There was sweat upon his brow, which was knit in concentration. Diarmuid felt every muscle in his body, spent and weary though they were, clench in horror and fear as the arrow shaft inched free from the wound. Would a billow of intestines follow? Had the physician judged wrongly? Aaron was in pain; in worse pain than when the arrow had gone in. Diarmuid had rescued him from the beach and the filthy alley only for him to die upon the table of a Jewess, beneath the aid of a Jew physician who hadn’t even invoked God’s aid prior to enacting this horrible procedure. His breathing was too fast. He needed to slow it, or he’d become lightheaded and crack his head open on the stones like he had when he was six and frightened of the billy goat.

The spoons and arrowhead came loose with a sucking pop, and Aaron’s drugged cry of pain would haunt Diarmuid’s nights for years to come.

Intestines did not follow. A trail of blood did, leaving a streak across his belly, but the physician pressed a cloth against the wound to stanch it. He dumped the arrow in the dish of water. It gleamed, ugly and bloody. Diarmuid stared at it, and the hungry face of Sir Raymond, cast in the Devil’s red by firelight, glared back.

Diarmuid barely remembered the rest of the operation. The physician flushed the wound with boiled, cooled water, then quickly sewed it shut with stitches Diarmuid envied. He could never get his own mending to look so tidy.

“All that’s left is to wait,” the physician said, stepping back to wash his hands. “Rest and water, broth in three days if he survives. If his intestines were punctured, then they will leak their contents into his body and he will die. If somehow, by God’s grace, his intestines were spared, then he may live. These things are difficult to predict.”

Diarmuid’s fumbled at his belt. The world felt distant, as though he stood in his cell at the monastery, the sun a bright shadow across the dark interior, the crying gulls faint through the thick stone. He drew out the pouch of reliquary jewels. Chalcedony, a last pearl, and two small beryls.

“Payment,” he said. “I—my thanks—”

The physician looked up from the handful of jewels Diarmuid had thrust upon him. “Do you realize how much money you have given me?”

Diarmuid shook his head.

“I will take this,” the physician said, holding up one of the beryls. “More, and there would be questions asked.”

“Thank you,” Diarmuid said, unable somehow to articulate his terrible gratitude and overwhelming, hollowing relief. “For your help.”

“It is my duty as physician to ease suffering,” he said with a small bow, and with that he left.

Only Ruth remained. Her lips were pursed, her arms folded about herself, and Diarmuid knew that she did not care for their presence.

“My husband will be home soon,” she said into the silence. _Please leave_ , Diarmuid heard.

Diarmuid felt surpassing small and pathetic. “I cannot move him, yet.”

Ruth did not look pleased by this.

“We won’t take up space, just a pallet. I can pay you for clothes and food. And I can work.”

“You would not mind working for a Jew?” she asked, a waspish tone in her voice.

Diarmuid’s brow furrowed. He looked down at Aaron, who now slept, though not peacefully, if the wretched expression on his face was aught to go by. “I would do whatever I could to pay my debts,” he replied. “This man, he has—he has saved my life three times at least in the past week, and he has been steadfast to me since I was a boy. I love him, and you helped save him.” His words dried up, and he was left feeling hollow.

Something in Ruth’s face softened. “You are very young,” she said, and she sounded exhausted, but relieved, as well. Diarmuid opened his mouth to ask her what she meant, but she spoke over him, saying, “you can sleep in the goat shed. There is a stall where my husband sleeps when they drop kids.”

“Thank you,” Diarmuid said. The words felt like mush in his mouth, meaningless from the number of times he had said them that day. They were empty words, as empty as the promise given by a French lord.

It didn’t matter. His mute was still alive.

***

END

**Author's Note:**

> I told myself I was gonna write an epic story but I'm just gonna go ahead and post what I have rather than lie to myself any further
> 
> ([Tumblr](http://kaasknot.tumblr.com/post/177487467934/the-horse-and-his-rider-hath-he-thrown-into-the))


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